Professor Michel Aubier was fined 50,000 euros and a 6-month suspended prison sentence for false testimony before a Senate commission of inquiry.
Professor Michel Aubier, former head of the pneumology department at Bichat hospital (Paris), was prosecuted in front of the 31e Paris correctional chamber. He was accused of “false testimony” during his hearing by the Senate committee responsible for assessing the cost of air pollution. He had been careful not to mention his financial ties with Total.
Professor Aubier did not appear in court for the verdict, perhaps wrongly. The sentence pronounced has indeed exceeded the requisitions of the prosecution, which demanded a fine of 30,000 euros against the doctor. He was finally sentenced to a 6-month suspended prison sentence, and a fine of 50,000 euros. And the sanction could have been even heavier: the fine could have risen to 75,000 euros, and the pulmonologist could have spent up to 5 years behind bars.
Proportionate sentencing
Evelyne Sire-Marin, the president of the court, declared that the sentence was “proportionate to the gravity of the facts: lying in front of the national representation”. On April 16, 2015, before the Senate committee, he declared that he had “no connection with the economic players” in the sector.
It was on this assertion that he was condemned. Professor Aubier has in fact been employed by the Total group since 1997 as a medical consultant. He has even been a member of the Board of Directors of the Total Foundation since 2007. In 2014, his activities within the oil giant brought him in more than 170,000 euros. Enough to accuse him of perjury.
Loss of credibility
These links pose an obvious problem of conflicts of interest, and discredit the words of a pneumology spawner often summoned by the media, and therefore by the Senate committee, for his independent expertise.
His freedom of speech seems in doubt, after he told the Senators that the number of cancers linked to pollution was “extremely low”. A posture already expressed in the media, in particular during a broadcast ofHello Doctors, which had made many of his colleagues jump.
“I have never minimized the effects of pollution on health, he defended himself in court. I have never been a negationist ”. Not enough for Ms. Sire-Marin: “The parliamentary inquiry committees work to enlighten the legislator in the general interest, by relying on public hearings of expert personalities, whom they choose with complete confidence”. A trust betrayed by the links with Total that Professor Aubier probably did not assume before the commission.
A hailed decision
The NGOs Génrations Futures and Écologie sans frontières, involved in the prosecution, welcomed “an exemplary verdict”. “We are extremely satisfied,” said Nadir Saïfi, vice-president of Ecology Without Borders. This is a very clear message to all Aubiers in France and Europe, many of whom have a conflict of interest. “
“For me, there was no conflict of interest,” insisted Professor Aubier during his trial, before admitting an error in judgment for not having mentioned his contract with Total. “If I found myself in this situation today, I would declare it.”
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